Eigengrau
by ChaiTeaJunkie
Summary: There are holes in the world, and Lyle's prepared to fill them, no matter what the cost. Dorian, brotherless, must discover himself after seventeen years of living life as a shadow. Keani doesn't even know where to begin. SxK, RxOC, OCxOC
1. Chapter 1

**(A/N: This story is purely for practicing writing, so sorry if it's not what you were expecting. I haven't written in a while (and have actually been suffering from some pretty severe writer's block, a.k.a everything's been done before) so I figured a fanfiction was a good way to get back into it. As for background, another disappointment is that I'm obviously writing this before "Dream Drop Distance" is being released in North America, so I have no idea if what I'm using in my narratives is still factually correct, or if it's been negated with this new installment. I'll try my best to not "tread on the feet" of this new game, but no guarantees. Again, sorry if it wasn't what you were expecting, but I hope you enjoy it nevertheless! A final p.s., I'll begin each chapter with a set of song lyrics; I swear it adds to the reading experience if you listen to that particular song while reading. Also, the lyrics will almost always reflect the chapter in some way. Plus, I just like showing off my awesome music tastes, as I'm sure most, if not all, of you do, too. Enjoy!)**

* * *

Chapter I

_Watch it rise up where you hide your pearl.  
__Feel the tide low where you cast those stones you wear  
__When no one's home. Do they feel cold on your bones,  
__All the years I've missed your warmth?_

Young the Giant, "Islands"

Fluid circulated through his lungs only to spew back out again through flared nostrils, like two tiny rivers in the ocean. _That_ is _where I am_, he thought, _right? The ocean?_

He floated aimlessly still, a single beam of light resting gently upon him from the surface of the water, and as he blinked his eyes slowly open, he wasn't surprised to see they didn't sting from the salt. This _was_ a dream, after all; his step brother taught him about lucid dreaming, once. He said if you could master the skill, every night you could be swimming in a pool of sex, drugs and junk food. Lyle would spend his time on useless shit like that.

His body was feeling heavier, and water rushed from every side of him up to heaven, endlessly darting without ever breaking the surface. Dorian reached his arms out and paddled, desperate, for reasons even he couldn't rationalize, to stay buoyant. Still he sunk and as he opened his mouth to scream, not a sound came out. The ocean floor expanded beneath him and fissured down the center, a crack in old wall paint. As the crack spread, the water seemed to vacuum even more strongly now, and Dorian felt the light leaving his eyes as he slipped through the opening.

The tension on his body seemed to ease, and his arms, fighting and flailing fruitlessly, were welcomed with a kind sort of lightness, the absence of the water's resistance. In the pitch darkness, resting on something feathery and soft, he brought a hand to his arm; he was totally dry.

It didn't take long for Dorian's eyes to adjust to see the wire net of his brother's bed above his own, his bright blue comforter enveloping his body and the trashed, small room of his father's house, littered with Lyle's potato chip bags and Dorian's programming books and summer school assignments. Every piece of rubbish in its right place, with barely an inch of purple carpet or desktop visible, it occurred to Dorian that there was no way he could still be dreaming.

"Lyle," he whispered to the bed above him, "you up?"

"Yeah," he answered. He didn't sound tired.

"I think I just had one of those lucid dreams you were telling me about. It was short, but I was swimming—"

"There are holes in the world," muttered Lyle.

"—in the ocean, and sunk—what?"

"There are holes in the world, Dorian."

Dorian flipped to his left side so he was staring at the wall, papered with magazine cutouts of models in bikinis and video game imaginations of fantastical terrains made entirely of crystal, of lava, of water. "What? Wake up, man," said Dorian, deciding his brother was only still half-asleep.

"There are holes in the world, all waiting to be filled." Dorian opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it, and his brother continued. "Where did everything come from? Where are our inventors, our scientists, our authors? We're on an island, and that's all there is, but something can't come from nothing."

Lyle must have been high again. Of course these questions needed answering, but nobody knew where to find the answers, so very few asked the questions. Usually Lyle didn't, either. "I don't think they're gone," he kept on, "I think they're lost. The inventors, scientists, authors… they're not gone. They're somewhere else. They're not across the ocean, because the ocean just brings us back here. Right? They've tried that. They found another way out. The inventors, I mean. And scientists."

"Why are you thinking about this?" Dorian didn't feel bad. It had to be asked.

"I can't just leave it alone. I don't know why everyone else on this island can."

Lyle. Sometimes, Dorian thought, his heart was too big for his body. He buried his head deeper into his down pillow in with a sigh. "Remember that old fairy tale Mom told us before going to bed?"

"No," he lied. "Tell me again."

"Years ago," began Dorian, still in a whisper, "The world was much bigger. Infinite, even. There were mountains, farms, deserts and jungles. There were miniature oceans called lakes which had no salt, and snowy tundras with glaciers the size of skyscrapers. Light and darkness lived in peace together here, in…" he searched for the words his mom used to use, "completion. Though the dark was alluring, it was dangerous. The light was safe and pleasant, and so people became greedy over it. Eventually this greed only amplified the darkness, and it seemed all light was lost. But it wasn't. A single sliver of light lived on in the hearts of children, who weren't corrupted with greed, who understood that the light could not be kept in a vacuum, no matter how brilliant. It needed the darkness.

"The world was beginning to crumble. It was separating, and each separate piece was dying. But one child with light still in her heart saved our world from falling; she locked her light away in the heart of the world, a light no human or darkness could take or destroy. Because of this little girl, we live safely in our thriving world, balanced in light and darkness, and we can only hope all the others have survived and someday we'll be reunited again."

"That's all we could come up with?" asked Lyle. "Light, dark… they're too… not concrete. Abstract, yeah. What do they mean? A war between good and evil? Still abstract. I can't think of anything else."

"Maybe you're not supposed to." Dorian flipped over again onto his back. "Maybe we're supposed to just wait. And stop asking questions."

"I'm sick of waiting."

"You're eighteen. You've got a whole lifetime of waiting ahead of you."

Lyle fell silent, and the weight of the evening pressed down on Dorian's eyes until he dropped into a quiet, dreamless sleep.

* * *

For the middle of the summer, the afternoon was uncomfortably dim. The sun was shadowed with a thick cover of clouds, and to make things drearier, Dorian's satchel full of books was pulling down heavily on his shoulder and his black sneakers dragged in the beach's sand. The tide was high today, threatening to lick at his feet and swallowing bits of the beach up with every slurp.

"Leave me the fuck alone, alright?"

Dorian wasn't surprised, as he turned around to the source of the noise, that he never heard the girl's voice before.

She was in his summer school class, this girl, but she never raised her hand. The girl sat, always, with her head down, hiding behind a curtain of straight-cut, strawberry blond bangs. Her eyes, makeup-less and oddly-colored, were burning holes in the girl she was walking next to (but seemed to be attempting to make an escape from). This second girl was noticeably thinner and taller. Additionally, she looked like a runway model with her high heels, short, floral skirt and black tank top with a single, felt red rose on the left breast, especially in comparison to the blond girl's lazy one-shoulder-off shirt and denim shorts, all coupled with worn-looking white and blue sneakers.

"I'm just trying to _help_ you," the other girl seemed to howl, that way that girls like her always did when they were complaining, ending the last word of the sentence with a too audible "a" sound. "You probably just, like, don't get girl advice that often, you know? I mean, everyone knows about your mom—"

"Shut _up_!" the quiet blond screamed at the other girl, to the paralyzing point of her voice cracking and jumping three octaves.

The taller girl's mouth formed an "o" of surprise as she stood, unmoving, for a moment in her tracks. Then, she buried one heel into the sand and brought both hands up to one of her long strands of violet-brown hair and tugged gently on it. "I didn't _mean_ it like that, okay? I'm just trying to say that I can help—"

"I don't need your help."

"You do, though. You obviously can't do any makeup or you'd be playing up your cheekbones, first of all. And you missed a couple sections straightening your hair."

"That was purposeful. Please, leave me alone. Who the fuck are you?"

The girl wasn't leaving. "I'm Sadie. I really didn't mean to be a bitch. I just wanted to help you."

"I don't need help."

"Hey, leave her alone, all right?" Dorian commanded, walking slowly up to the two of them. The brunette girl, Sadie, looked him up and down once before crossing her arms over her chest. She seemed to puff her torso out, trying, like an agitated cat, to make herself look bigger (which really wasn't necessary, seeing as how she was nearly Dorian's height already).

"You don't get it. I was trying to help—"

"I do get it, and she said she didn't need your help. Now leave her alone."

Sadie just rolled her eyes, perfectly rung with blue eyeliner, and pulled her pink backpack higher up her shoulder before walking, deliberately, it seemed, slowly away. Dorian watched her disappear into the distance, never once looking behind her, and turned back to the other girl, whose brow was wrinkled and big eyes narrowed up at him. Dorian's smile disappeared off his face.

"She'll probably leave you alone from now on," he said.

"Fuck off." The blond girl shouldered past him and began walking in the same direction Sadie went off to.

"Hey, wait!" Dorian jogged up to her and walked faster than he had in weeks just to keep pace. She refused to look to her right at him, and kept her gaze glued to the sand she trudged through, kicking hundreds of grains with every angry step. "Why am I the bad guy? I'm not the one trying to tell you that you style your hair wrong."

She stopped and turned toward him, and Dorian only had a second to crack a smile before the blond girl's palm slapped hard across his face. With a hiss, he brought his hand up to his left cheek and cupped it for a second.

"I _do_ style my hair wrong, and I don't need your help, either. Who are you? I can fight my own battles."

She didn't wait for an answer and kept walking, but at this point, Dorian had given up on pursuing her any further. "Dorian," he answered in a grumble, rubbing his face for another moment. There was a splashing sound, and his head snapped to the side to look at the sea. Barely a few drops of water remained suspended in the air by the time he looked over, and concentric rings of undulation spread from where they dropped back into the ocean. Something about that particular patch of water looked brighter than the rest, like the last remaining rays of sunshine from behind the dark blanket of clouds shone exactly there.

There was nothing, moments later—just still, grey water. Dorian fingered the strap of his satchel and headed back home, deciding he shouldn't have thrown himself into that girl's business and maybe, sometimes, he was just as bad as Lyle and his heart was too big for his body.

* * *

"Can we get going?"

Dorian was busy adjusting the belt of his jeans. He shook his head slowly, prepared to get Lyle back for pressuring him into something so stupid. "We'll wait 'til I'm ready," he said.

Lyle muttered something foul and leaned back on their shared computer chair. "Lighten up," he suggested. "It's just a get-together. A small one. There'll be booze and girls and music. You like music, right?"

"I like… all of the above. I don't like being a wingman."

"What's not to like? You help me get laid and you get introduced to the girl's slightly less attractive friend."

"Yeah, sounds like fun." Dorian grabbed his house keys and shoved them into a pocket of his jeans. "Look, I don't even know how, so—"

"It's _easy_. You compliment me and make me look good."

"Doesn't sound easy."

"Ha, ha." He was grabbing his wallet and cramming it into the seat of his own jeans, which were significantly tighter than the relaxed pair Dorian picked out, and black in color. Dorian always felt that Lyle's darker sense of fashion didn't quite fit him the right way; his clothes were a pentagram on a puppy, something to doll him up in a way that his heaven-blue eyes and wavy, pale brown hair rejected. His skin was too sun-kissed and his cheeks too pink. He was not who he dressed himself up to be.

_Perhaps_, Dorian allowed, _this is why he got girls_, and he didn't think about it again. The two boys headed downstairs, dodging their sleepy father (who laid, reclined on the white leather couch in front of a muted game show) and closing the front door gently behind them.

Dorian had heard of something called "cars." They were on television, in video games, in books. Cars were these fictional things that people drove around in, propelled by gas. The idea was quite realistic, actually, and someone in the northern half of Ma'ema'e Island had written an award-winning article about how cars were quite possible. Combined with the select number of studies released by the select number of anthropologists on the island, this was only further proof that the inhabitants of Ma'ema'e were not alone in the world.

Who needed cars on the island, however? Nothing was more than a couple of hours walking-distance away. The world was small. Everyone knew almost everyone and nobody gave directions. Everyone knew almost everywhere.

It is for that reason that Dorian and Lyle could walk in silence the half-hour to Lucinda's house without double-checking directions. However, even a stranger could tell whose house was Cindy's; the flashing, colored lights emitting from the open windows and the booming, floor-shaking bass of the music gave enough away. Without even knocking, Dorian and Lyle made their way through the powder blue front door, as they had since they were children. Being in the same preschool class meant everyone was welcome, always.

Cindy expected no strangers. Barely looking at the brothers, she ran up to them both, black hair flying behind her, and hugged them as a singularity around the neck. She was warm and smelled of liquor, her sweat sticking slightly to the boys' shirts, but they didn't mind. "You're _here_!" she squealed.

"We are!" Lyle shouted back, only half-mockingly, and twice as nice as he usually was. Lyle could never be in a bad mood with free booze.

"_Finally_, Lyle can get a party started!" she laughed, letting go of the two and struggling to stay upright in her three-inch, black sequined heels. "And Dorian, you're nice."

"Cool, Cindy."

"You know I'm _kidding_!" She gave another sloppy hug, this one dedicated solely to Dorian (which he couldn't complain about; Cindy's breasts seemed to be growing every day and served as a wonderful, cushiony barrier between the two teenagers), and departed from the brothers, telling them to make themselves at home, make a few drinks and for the love of God, get people to start dancing because Claudia looks like an idiot out there, all on her own.

Lyle smirked back at Dorian, rolling his eyes, and gestured for his brother to follow. "I'm not telling anyone to dance," he told Dorian, who just nodded. He knew. They were heading to the kitchen, of course, to make Lyle's favorite drink (a Cuba Libre), of course, and for Dorian to search for beer which, of course, would not be there.

Thankfully, the rum wasn't gone yet, and Dorian fixed himself two cups of suspiciously strong drinks in plastic red cups while Dorian dug for one of the few remaining beer cans. "I don't see her," shouted Lyle into Dorian's ear as he popped the tab open.

Dorian picked up the can opener, and popped a tiny hole into the top of the can. "Not here yet," he suggested, then took a swig. His mouth twisted into a sort of disgust; the beer was warm.

"Guess not. I'll go scout her out, just in case. Stay somewhere I can find you?"

Dorian shrugged. It was getting warm in there, and he was tired of the obese boy with the sweat-greased curly mane who stood next to him with his belly knocking him into the table. He'd almost stabbed his hand with the can opener. "I'll be outside."

* * *

If it wasn't so goddamn windy outside, maybe the flame atop her little pink lighter would stay alive for more than two seconds.

She finally managed to ignite the tip of her cigarette, and, in the process, inhaled far too much. Letting out a small cough, Keani quickly covered her mouth with the crook of her elbow, and looked (not suspiciously in the slightest) around the backyard to make sure nobody had seen. It was one thing to get chastised for not doing her hair properly, but something completely different to be laughed at for not being able to hold her fucking tobacco.

It may as well have been the case, she realized herself as she flicked a bit of ash onto the concrete patio. It took her a month to finish a pack, on average. While cost-effective, it wasn't necessarily the level of addiction she was looking for. Her eyes were straining in the dark, so she whipped off her glasses and set them next to her on the concrete.

_And there they are_, thought Keani as she craned her neck backwards to look inside the house, through the glass back door. Tens of beautiful girls in short skirts, high heels and tank tops, half with faces needlessly caked with powder and the other half with an annoyingly natural beauty with hardly any makeup at all, given to them by the gods of Island Sun and Endless Walk-On-The-Beach Free Pedicures. Beautiful, loose beach waves, ironed-straight hair and glittery eyelids, these girls must have been best friends with that Sadie girl from earlier.

Never would she admit it out loud, but yes, these girls had some kind of talent or some kind of instruction she didn't have. _Thank you very much, absentee mother of mine_, she thought, but of course no part of her genuinely gave a crap about that bit. Some nights, at parties like these, where she sat, alone, in the backyard, smoking, she wondered what it would be like to be one of the beautiful girls, hit on left and right and effortlessly garnering attention. Perhaps, she thought, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to let herself be taken under Sadie's wing. She wasn't rude in the slightest; she actually seemed quite basically nice, just ignorant and annoyingly persistent.

_Persistence, that's it_, Keani pondered, sucking in another lungful of smoke. She hated the persistence of her. She hated the persistence of everything, and in the back of her mind waited for something wonderful and beautiful to come out of this growing thunderstorm that would change everything. Fuck persistence.

The door opened to the backyard, and Keani twisted her head back forward, pretending she didn't notice. For a split second, she could have sworn she saw two bright yellow dots in the distance, somewhere in the shadows of Lucinda's parents' shrubbery, but when she blinked twice and threw her glasses on, they were gone.

* * *

**(A/N: I know, it's not the greatest first chapter, but it's not the worst, either, not with my history. I hope you're seeing a bit of a pattern in the names; not every character follows this (like Lyle and Sadie), but a lot of them have island-based names. Lucinda's a common name in Brazilian, which is one of the many indigenous languages in the Caribbean. Dorian's Greek, and though Greece isn't necessarily an island, it has many. And then, clearly, there's Keani, which is Hawaiian. The name of the island is Hawaiian, as well. I even considered making the milk ten dollars a gallon here (that was a joke). :D**

**Anyway, I know it's not too Kingdom Hearts-ish yet, but my first chapters never are. It'll get there by the next or the one afterwards. Also, I'm aware that the games would never have its characters blatantly drinking or smoking or cussing. That's why it's a fucking fanfiction, haha. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it!)**


	2. Chapter 2

**(A/N: I didn't mention this in the first chapter, but the story title, "Eigengrau," is really just a placeholder. It has a lot of potential meaning: "Eigengrau" is the name of the color we see when we close our eyes, which, incidentally, is not necessarily black, but a very dark grey. Despite its potential, I have no use for the title as of yet. If I decide to take the plot somewhere where the title makes sense, I'll keep it, but more than likely, it's getting replaced in a few chapters. Bear with me! One last thing: though it hasn't been released in English yet, I read up on the events of Dream Drop Distance. I'm hoping my limited knowledge of it will help me create a good story. SPOILER: Essentially, with the secret ending, Yen Sid is looking for seven keyblade wielders to fight against the new Organization, so I guess my story will be my imagination of the "fourth" Kingdom Hearts. It's odd to think that I've written fanfictions of basically the same thing before the ACTUAL Kingdom Hearts series went in that direction. That's foresight, for you.)**

* * *

Chapter II

_You could stand on the back of a shuddering beam  
__With a pistol firing shots into the air.  
__You could run in the blood of the sun's hard rays.  
__You could drive the mountains down into the bay  
__Or go back to the east where it's all so civilized,  
__Where I was born to life, but I am leaving the life.  
__I am leaving._

Shearwater, "You As You Were"

There was one girl outside already, and the back of her head looked familiar. It was a reddish-blond (though desaturated in the evening dark), mostly straight but a few locks remained in an awkward wave. It had to be her; Dorian contemplated turning around and going right back inside, but no, it was too late for that; she had turned her head back forward in some kind of attempt to pretend she hadn't noticed him, but they both knew she did.

Without any real choice, Dorian walked up to the edge of the patio and joined her, sitting a comfortable few feet to her right. The concrete wasn't damp, as he would have expected, and had to keep reminding himself that it hadn't rained today. There had been thunder and lightning since the early morning, but not a single drop of rain.

The girl said nothing, just slowly worked away at her cigarette. For a moment, she just held it there, between her index and middle finger of her right hand, rested atop her knee, and let the tobacco burn away to ashes and fall to the ground. "What?" she finally asked after the considerable period of silence, probably feeling Dorian's stare.

"Uh, nothing. How are you?"

She sucked at the cancer again before offering it to Dorian, who shook his head. "Fine," she said. "You?"

"Good," he answered, then took a deep gulp of his beer. Warm or not, beer was beer, and even dishwater beer was better than that cheap rum that Cindy seemed perfectly content supplying bottles of at every party she threw. "You're not still angry at me?" he asked, but immediately regretted doing so when her silence followed.

After what felt like an eternity, she lifted a single shoulder. "You were trying to help."

Nowhere in that did Dorian hear an apology, but he almost didn't care. He could almost smell this girl's independence seeping from her pores like sweat, so he found himself content with the fact that she maybe possibly _almost_ admitted she was in the wrong. Now, he thought with another swig of beer, he could stop thinking about her and keep it in the past. He had no reason to care, after all.

_I never got her name, though_, he reminded himself. It was too odd to not know someone's name on the island, especially someone who lived in his same district and was clearly around the same age. "I'm Dorian," he said. "Are you new to Southern Ma'ema'e?"

She shook her head, and Dorian noticed she blinked more than the average person—around once every couple seconds. "I've lived here all my life."

Nothing could have made Dorian feel worse. "Wow. Sorry. You're… quiet, then?"

"Sure." After a last suck on her cigarette, she dropped it into the grass and ground it into the dirt with her brown-stained sneakers. "I'm Keani."

"That's a pretty name."

"Don't."

They were silent again. Dorian hadn't meant to hit on the girl—she wasn't his type at all—but what else could kindness be attributed to from man to woman, especially a kindness so strong to negate a previous misgiving? "Sorry," he said.

"You apologize a lot," she mentioned, finally turning her head towards him. Despite the dark, he could see her eyes clearly for the first time; she had the eyes of a dog, one an icy, matte blue, the other a deep brown which grew darker near the center of her iris. It gave her gaze an uneven look—as if one eye was perpetually more open than the other.

"Sorry."

Keani smirked. "Dorian?" she asked.

"Yeah?"

"Just making sure."

At that moment, Dorian felt an inexplicable lightness in his chest. For the first time today, he felt as if he had done something right. Afraid to speak and ruin whatever liking she may or may not have taken to him, he sipped at his beer and kept his eyes glued forward. The cloud cover looked odd tonight; perhaps it was the angle or a reflection of the moon, but it looked purple. The center, where the swirling clouds seemed to meet, was nearly black in color, and every now and then illuminated, for a split second, to a bright indigo when a string of lightning flashed in its eye.

"Have we ever had weather like this?" asked Keani, seemingly thinking the same thing.

"Not since I've been alive. It's pretty, though."

"Scary. I hate storms."

"So why are you outside?"

Again, she shrugged. "I guess being outside with one thing I hate is better than being inside with forty things I can't stand."

Dorian could have asked her why she came here in the first place, but wasn't it obvious? She seemed to walk right into things she didn't like, and Dorian wasn't the psychoanalyst of the family. Even if Lyle did want to come outside and figure this girl out for him, he'd be more interested in getting in her pants than getting in her head. That was his problem, Lyle's; he had so much potential and so few fucks to give.

Then, it hit Dorian: he didn't want to be here, either.

He stood. "Let's get out of here. Go to the beach, or something."

"Stop."

"I'm not hitting on you," he assured her, holding out a hand to help her out. "Neither of us wanna be here, and I'll bet that storm looks cooler from the ocean." _And it's the least I can do for making you upset_.

Keani sighed for a second, staring at his hand, but eventually grabbed it. Her palm was sweaty, but he had a good enough grip to pull her upwards. She stood a few inches shorter than him—shorter than he remembered her, back when she was slapping him on the face and stomping bitterly away in the sand.

After their first step through the lawn, the back door opened. The two turned around, and there as Lyle, stumbling, already. "Dorian, I found her! Where are you going?"

Keani looked at Dorian. "Leaving," he said. "We're bored."

"What? You promised you'd be my wingman."

"I didn't promise anything," sighed Dorian.

"Come _on_, man. I need you. Unless you're…" He stopped himself, raising an eyebrow at the two.

"No," said Keani simply. "We're not."

Lyle let his eyes close and put up two hands in surrender. "So you're free, then. Come on, man, just a half hour."

"Who is he?" asked Keani.

"My brother. Step brother," he quickly corrected.

"So help him," she said, shrugging. She seemed genuine, and Dorian, for a moment, wasn't sure what to believe. Wasn't this the kind of crap people usually pull, the passive-aggressive shit, when they were actually angry at the other person and wanted him to see the error in his ways? "I'm not getting between family. Meet me at the beach, maybe."

Dorian ground his feet awkwardly into the lawn. "Please, dude." Lyle's hands were pressed together, fingers entwined like a beggar's.

"I'll meet you," said Dorian. "Promise."

"Sure." Keani was already walking through the backyard and undoing the hinge on the fence. What baffled Dorian wasn't that Lyle absolutely needed him to pick up a girl (the entire reason he was dragged to this party in the first place), but that Keani didn't seem to care one way or the other which decision he made. In fact, after five minutes of conversation, where people are supposed to get a pretty good first impression, Dorian had barely any concept of what _did_ matter to the girl.

He followed his brother into the party.

If it were even possible, Cindy's house had grown more crowded since Dorian stepped outside. His brother helped weave the two of them through the crowd until they reached the living room (stopping only for Dorian to grab a second beer), which smelled of sweat and looked like the polyester couch had been ruined. Claudia was still dancing alone, but Lyle had directed Dorian's attention to a pair of two girls.

The first looked rather pretty, standing shyly with both hands wrapped around her red cup. She wore a crimson halter top, which hung exceedingly low, but paired with black, snakeskin-print leggings. Her platinum blond hair was curled and down, resting just atop her breasts (where Dorian could tell Lyle had been staring). The girl was pretty, but not pretty enough to detract from the shock of finding the girl from earlier, Sadie, standing right next to her.

She was still supermodel tall and thin, but with her toothpick arms wrapped around her chest and bright eyes narrowed darkly, she certainly didn't appear fragile.

"Hey, Minnie," Lyle began. "It is Minnie, right? From Biology?" He held out a hand to the sweeter-looking girl, which she timidly grabbed. Her shake looked just as delicate as she acted. Meanwhile, Sadie and I avoided each other's eyes for a dangerously long minute.

"Yeah," she replied. "I… I remember your face, but—"

"It's Lyle. And this is my brother, Dorian."

"Hi, Dorian." Minnie reached over and shook his hand. "I'm Minnie. This is my cousin, Sadie."

"We've met," said Sadie and Dorian in unison, Sadie with a noticeable rumble in her voice.

After a few awkward, silent moments, Lyle began his spiel. Start with Biology class, some stupid fact about the teacher or something, move onto high school. Any extra curriculars? I was in soccer. What do you like to do? Compliment her earrings. Where did you get them? You have good taste, unlike a lot of girls here. This would go on, and Dorian, halfheartedly, would interject and compliment Lyle when he got the chance. He was supposed to be helpful, but he just felt annoying.

It wasn't like Lyle needed his help, regardless; he never thought he would. Minnie twirled her hair around her fingers, smiled a lot and nodded at everything he said. Her cheeks were pink and she moved closer to him when he put a hand on her arm.

Meanwhile, Sadie could only glare at Dorian. _At least_, he thought, _she's looking at me now_. He had already left the conversation briefly to chug three more beers, and it wasn't until he was choking on the carbonation that he finally asked her, "What?" thinking that perhaps he would have preferred her to just pretend she didn't know him.

"Hm? Nothing," she said, smoothing down her short, silver dress.

"What's with the death stare?" Sadie didn't answer, and Lyle and Minnie were already physically excluding them from the conversation, their shoulders barring their companions off. Lyle pushed a lock of pale hair out of Minnie's face and whispered something in her ear. Minnie giggled and stumbled, but when she recovered, took Lyle's hand and let him lead her outside. They were going back to his house, Dorian realized. Their father could sleep through anything. It looked like he couldn't go home for another couple of hours.

Sadie and Dorian were then forced to look at each other in the eyes, through lack of company, stone-faced. The stoicism dissolved before they could realize it into an understanding laughter.

"Someone's getting laid tonight," said Sadie. It was the first time Dorian saw her smile. Her bottom teeth overlapped each other slightly and the right side of her mouth lifted barely higher than the left. Her white bra strap had traveled down her left bicep, and Dorian could feel his palms growing moist.

"I guess I was a good wingman," said Dorian.

"'A' for effort. Not like he needed it."

"Right?" Dorian took the last sip of his beer and crushed the can between his fingers. The room was mobile and his skin was warm. Comfortably without inhibitions, he said, "Sorry for, uh, confronting you earlier. It was none of my business."

She shook her head. Apparently, she was just as drunk as he was, as she lost her footing briefly where she stood. "Neither was hers any of mine. I feel bad enough about making her upset. I just don't want to think about it anymore." She shrugged, taking a drink from her red cup. "I'm a bitch."

"I don't think so." Dorian couldn't help but notice how smooth her brown hair looked, falling in loose waves over her shoulders. Heavy, blue eye makeup was smeared about her face from sweat and the simple length of the night. Her skin looked soft. Without thinking, he brought his hand out to hers. He braced himself for rejection—her recoil, a slap, a poor excuse to leave—but found that none came. Much of the rest of the time they spent in the crowded, smelly living room was a happy blur.

* * *

The beach had been a good idea, on Dorian's part.

When she looked up, Keani could see right into the eye of the storm. A dense black hole among swirling purple and grey clouds, it was like getting sucked upwards, through a soft tunnel. She could hardly believe it had been over an hour since she made it here, and it was just… too bad that Dorian couldn't come, too. That's all it was: too bad.

She laid in the sand, little grains traveling up the back of her shirt and the soft roar of the ocean silencing all other noise that side of the island. Every few minutes she turned her head back to see if he was there, just in case. For this reason, when she heard a rustling on the beach after nearly falling asleep, she was already half-prepared.

"Dorian?" asked Keani, flipping over. As she turned, she saw nothing in her immediate sight. After a few blinks and a quiet shrug, she decided the noise was a figment of her imagination. Just before she could turn and lie back down, a figure began to rise from a dark spot in the sand.

Keani was paralyzed. A gangly silhouette rose slowly from the ground like the dead from its burial site. It had two long antennae, bending in zig-zags and spanning the length of its torso and most of its legs, which were muscular and pitch black. Those legs led to large, toeless feet with pointed ends, unlike its oversized hands whose fingers must have been twice the length of her own. Keani whimpered for a moment, stepping backwards, and let out a small squeal.

It had two glowing, yellow eyes, perfectly rounded and staring right into her own. It was then that she knew that this creature was the one she had seen in Cindy's backyard. Was it following her? Was it an animal?

In her childhood, Keani's parents always told her to jump in the water if a swarm of bees ever came after her. While not necessarily a hive of insects, she assumed the rules still applied here (and certainly didn't have any time to think it over). The black, demonic creature moved quickly, and ran straight towards her. In a panic, Keani let out another scream and headed straight for the water. Hardly remembering the last time she swam, she dove under, eyes squeezed shut, and pedaled as far out into the ocean as she could until she ran out of breath less than thirty seconds later.

Still, Keani was impressed by her own abilities; she was at least ten yards off the shore, but the creature was there, standing right where the ocean lapped up on the sand but not seeming to dare make a move into the water. Those eyes—she could see them, she thought, in no light at all. She could probably see them with her eyes closed.

Behind it, another figure seemed to rise from the dark. Identical to the first, Keani rubbed her wet, salty hands over her eyes, thinking she saw double, but when she looked at the shore again, the second demon had not disappeared. Instead, a third was surfacing from the shore.

She couldn't contain the scream in the back of her throat any longer as she called out for help, but no one else was around.

* * *

Dorian could hardly remember how he had gotten up to Lucinda's room, but couldn't complain as he shuffled over a half-naked Sadie, sprawled out on his childhood friend's bed. With her hair a violet-brown halo about her head and her fingers laced around the back of Dorian's neck, he wondered when was the last time he had gotten to make love to something so beautiful. In fact, he wondered when he last made love at all; it seemed he barely even talked to girls these days, except of course for earlier.

"_Shit_!" he cried, scrambling to get out of bed. As he pushed himself off the edge, he slid immediately on the hardwood floor and fell on his face. His teeth bit into his lower lip and immediately the coppery taste of blood invaded his tongue. "Shit, shit," he mumbled, searching in the dark for his shirt and pants.

"What? Dorian, what's up?" asked Sadie. She sounded frustrated, sitting up in the bed but not moving to put her clothes back on.

"I promised someone something and… shit, what time is it?"

"Um." Sadie grabbed her phone from off of Cindy's night stand. "Quarter to one."

"Fuck, I'm so late," he muttered. In the timespan of fifteen seconds he had already thrown his shirt on, realized it was backwards, and fixed it the right way, buttoning up haphazardly all but the top button. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I really gotta go. Fuck."

"That's… _what_? What could be so important?"

Dorian may not have been necessarily in his right mind, but he was intelligent enough to realize that maybe it wasn't the best idea to bring up Keani to Sadie, or the other way around. Even though he had made nice with them both, that didn't necessarily mean that they had made nice with each other, even if Sadie felt sorry. "I just really gotta go."

As Dorian flipped the light on and slipped his shoes on, Sadie pulled the white comforter up over her nearly bare chest. Her face was painted red and her eyebrows knitted together. "This is an excuse, isn't it?" she said.

"No. No, it really isn't."

"Then tell me why you're leaving me naked in a bed."

"I really can't. I'm sorry." He grabbed his phone and keys and went to the door. With one last look back at the girl, he saw her mouth, slightly open, and her eyebrows relaxed but worry wrinkles forming on her forehead. Though he may have been imagining it, he could swear her eyes were glistening, and something told him, through a pang in his chest, that this was not the first time this had happened to her.

"You're beautiful," he reassured her, but still he left, and would spend the entire time as he ran to the beach wondering why only one person could ever win.

* * *

**(A/N: Agh, I know it's not the best ending for a chapter, and I apologize, but I really don't want to take it another scene; I think it's at a good place. Sorry if things feel rushed, as well; I'm pretty sick so I don't think my writing's really up to par. Also, I usually write my chapters out in a notebook first during class or whatever—it helps me spend more time on detail and specifics—but I've actually been, gasp, paying attention in class lately (or just not going due to sickness) so I did this all on the laptop. Sorry sorry sorry. But I hope you enjoyed it regardless! Please do remember this is just fanfiction though! I'll try to update soon, but the weekend may be pretty busy. We'll see. Hope you enjoyed it!) **


	3. Chapter 3

**(A/N: Well Jesus. For the record, I'm pretty busy these days: I've got quite a few essays due by the end of the month and have to worry about finding a place to live next year, hopefully finding a job, signing up for a summer class, one final exam (only one that's a sit-in test, thank God), move out, two quizzes… I'm busy. So I'm sorry if I don't crank these out over the next two weeks, and summer may not be too easy, either. I really miss the high school days where I had all the free time in the world to get shit done. Regardless, I hope you enjoy this chapter! And I hope I get it out in a reasonable time, haha.)**

* * *

Chapter III

_I'm wasting my days as I've wasted my nights  
__And I've wasted my youth.  
__You're waiting for something; you've waited in vain  
__Because there's nothing for you._

Crystal Castles, "Suffocation"

From far away the beach appeared to have been drowned in a sea of black, ebbing and flowing gently along the heavy wind of the storm. It wasn't until Dorian was a stone's throw away that he realized the black wasn't, in fact, inanimate, but rather a hundred if not several hundred gangly, black creatures. Their claws extended out into the ocean and their piercing, orb-like eyes glued in the distance, it was clear they were after something. It took Dorian quite a long time, hiding behind a few trees some yards away, of staring at the creatures' muscled arms, glowing, opalescent blue veins and bent antennae before he followed their lines of sight, out into the ocean.

Dorian had heard somewhere before that if you drink enough alcohol, you hallucinate. He had gotten to this point in drunkenness before and it didn't make much sense, but he couldn't eliminate the idea just yet. He thought he saw a girl, a girl whose silhouette and shoulder-length, blond hair looked suspiciously like Keani's—yes, it had to be Keani. She was treading water, her jaw sometimes bobbing below the surface, and he could only guess how long she had been out there.

"Keani!" he called, hardly thinking, running out in front of the trees.

In one clear motion, every head on the beach turned towards Dorian. Not seconds later, the creatures barreled after him, claws out. Once the initial paralysis subsided, Dorian turned on his heel and sped back the way he came, shouting over his shoulder, "Keani, run!" and hoping only she would hear.

* * *

This certainly wasn't what Keani had been expecting. It wasn't necessarily that Dorian was the charge-into-battle-with-an-impressive-looking-magical-sword type, but a human distraction didn't really suit her assumptions of him, either. Judging by the way he had stumbled out of the foliage and in front of the dark creatures, she could only assume he had drunk more when she left for the beach. Perhaps that was why he was late (but, of course, it didn't bother her).

The black animals seemed to forget about her immediately, all charging for Dorian. "Stupid," she muttered, paddling back to shore as fast as her arms could take her. He was leading them straight towards the town; certainly if they were willing to chase after two ordinary teenagers relentlessly and shamelessly, they would have a field day with the children and newborns of Ma'ema'e.

Her clothes were dripping with saltwater and sand stuck to her wet, bare feet, but she had no time to fix herself up when she retrieved her forgotten shoes from the sand and exerted the small amount of energy she had left to follow the crowd of black demons.

Still, it was enough. Keani found herself not far behind the crowd at all, but Dorian was, as she feared, creating more damage than he intended. At least half of the black animals were slipping into their own shadows and sliding into the neighborhood backyards. No doubt, if they could melt to the ground like ice cream in the summertime they would have no trouble getting into the homes. It wouldn't be long before they reached hers, she assumed.

Her stomach did a few gymnastics in her belly. She really wasn't worth all this.

Keani had made it maybe halfway back to Cindy's house when she heard it: an unmistakably masculine scream, a scream that sounded frighteningly like Dorian's. Then, there was a bright light—like a flash of lightning, only whiter and too near the ground—in the distance. The scream stopped and Keani stood, frozen, her knees threatening to give out under her. She would give anything for this to be a figment of her imagination, and what else could it be? Perhaps these shadowy demons were all a product of her subconscious, a side-effect of that new medication she was on which promised to produce vivid dreams. Perhaps, she was lucky, and Dorian never existed at all.

* * *

There was no way to explain the sudden weight Dorian found in his hands, but he wasn't complaining. It did, after all, seem to frighten the bugs that he'd been running from for the last ten minutes enough to get some breathing room. Still, it was so bizarre; one moment his legs were turning to jelly and had to resort to his defenses, throwing his arms up over his face, wishing he was anywhere else, and then one burst of blinding light later, it was there: a giant key.

Or, at least, he thought it was a key. It was an odd shape, really, starting from the white handle and guard, which formed a semi-circle around his left hand. This led to a similarly white shaft, surrounded by a very thick, pretty-looking black ribbon. The most dangerous part of the weapon, though, had to be what the "teeth" of this key must have been. It looked like a black sun, or more appropriately, a black shadow in the middle of a sun. A white halo of spikes surrounded this shadow, as well as a few, thinner and sharper yellow spikes. Five massive white spikes, more fatal in their appearance than even the yellow ones, pointed downwards.

Well, it had to be a weapon—it wasn't any kind of wall decoration Dorian would hang in his house (though he couldn't say the same for Lyle). It was hard to remember where, but Dorian could have sworn he had seen something like this before. Maybe it wasn't recently, but either this wasn't the first time he had seen a giant key or he was crazy.

It was nothing short of a gift, as if this weapon had been created with the sole purpose of kicking the shit out of this swarm. This was, of course, ridiculous, but Dorian didn't have the time to wonder where the key had come from and why he had received it. He was still in the process of convincing himself that what was happening was real and he wasn't just dying from alcohol poisoning. The process contained a lot less vomiting than he would have thought.

It took all of three minutes for Dorian to go from feeling blessed and empowered to completely doomed. Many of the creatures had branched out and begun invading backyards and, no doubt, homes, and even the relatively small number of them that had chosen to hang around and fight Dorian in the cul-de-sac were becoming too much. He was short of breath and his heart was pounding, and the more tired he grew, the hungrier and more desperate the attacks of these things became. Perhaps if he were sober, he thought, he could handle this, but right now there was little hope. He could only wonder if Keani had gotten away.

"Dorian!"

Stumbling out of the way of a claw's lunge, Dorian found Keani, standing at the entrance of the cul-de-sac. She still looked soaking wet as she jogged as close as was safe up to him, but he could find no visible cuts or bruises on her skin. Still, he asked. "Are you okay?"

"The world's disappearing. I'm peachy."

Dorian managed to stab and destroy one of these bugs and, like its predecessors, it faded immediately into the air. "Well, that's incredibly—" he hiccupped, "—pessimistic."

"I'm not kidding. Look," said the girl, pointing not ten feet behind her. Black, oil-like puddles covered the streets and were growing, slowly, amongst themselves. _How did I miss that_, Dorian wondered. "We have to get out of here."

"And go where? There's _nothing_ else." He swiped at another creature, knocking it back a few feet but not quite killing it. "There's the island," he continued, facing her though keeping his weapon up to protect his face, "and there's water, and that's it. There's nothing beyond it. Nothing."

Keani went quiet, and Dorian felt all his organs drop to the deepest point of his body. Lyle. He had forgotten all about Lyle, and that girl he had run off with. What was her name again? He couldn't recall. His brother was probably sleeping now, for all Dorian knew, defenseless and safe—until these bug things found their way to Dorian's neighborhood and inside his house, where his father was doomed, too.

"I meant go back to the ocean or something," Keani remarked with an odd tenseness in her voice. "They can't swim."

"You can't tread water forever. And look at them! They're relentless. They'd figure it out if we gave them enough time. Swimming, I mean. We have to fight."

"Where did you get that thing?"

Dorian had to admit he was getting pretty tired of questions, first from Lyle and now from Keani, that he didn't know the answer to. Whatever happened to the black and white world he knew since birth was irreversible. More difficult to accept was his growing certainty in his realization that his world never was black and white, but rather he never had a problem ignoring the colors, not until Keani. What he did know for sure was that she had been an adequate distraction from his fatigue, and all the creatures in the cul-de-sac were gone. Certainly after ten minutes of fighting it wasn't already second-nature.

"Let's go," she said, running up to him and grabbing his arm. Her hands were cold and her fingertips wrinkled. Just as she tugged, the earth seemed to shake beneath them violently, jarring the two apart. Keani nearly fell to her knees, but caught herself with a palm on the ground. The street cracked with a sound like thunder, slowly at first and then all at once. She was on the opposite side of the fissure than Dorian, a fissure which was growing exponentially in size.

A giant extremity latched onto Dorian's side of the split, slowly yet with haste, like a time lapse of a daisy sprouting from the ground. It looked like a giant, dark tentacle with glowing, blue and green veins pulsating beneath its translucent skin. In the place of suction cups on the underside of this protrusion were small spikes the color of the ocean in a storm. The spikes broke into the ground, gripping at the concrete and pulling the remainder of the creature upwards. Dorian's voice wouldn't work, a scream caught in his throat, but he had backed away onto one of the lawns of the houses behind him.

Seven other tentacles rose from the crevasse, three of them ending before their points in bloody stumps that looked suspiciously like they were ripped off by the spikes of one of their own. He tried to look away as the body of this thing emerged, but could not. It was a wrinkly, giant lump of a body that seemed to rise slower even than the tentacles had. Though similarly colored, it was smeared with the same blood of the broken tentacles. Various, deep gashes ran down its face, and there was no doubt in Dorian's mind that they were created from the tentacle spikes. It was only moments after this thing had completely surfaced and was clinging to the earth on Dorian's side of the fissure that he noticed its eyes had been scratched out leaving mangled black sockets. The empty orifices pointed directly at him.

Keani was screaming but Dorian didn't understand. He had no strength to fight, and just barely managed to avoid a slow, clumsy movement on the part of the creature. It had plucked one of its tentacles from where it was rooted in the ground and slammed it back down where Dorian was standing not a few seconds before. He considered himself lucky—this thing was sluggish and graceless. But he couldn't fight.

Dorian had no choice. He could barely make out Keani on the other end of the fissure, who was still calling out to him, but backing up a few inches every second. She was weaponless and defenseless over there, and Dorian had no doubt that she would die if he didn't make it.

Dorian ran as fast as the exasperated muscles in his legs would take him and leapt off the edge of the crack. He flew through the air for maybe a second and managed to cling, desperately, to the edge of the other side. His fingers were slipping quickly, and Keani called out his name, but did not run towards him. As she wavered in indecision to risk getting closer to the beast, Dorian could hear the low, throaty gurgles of an angry growling sound he wasn't sure normal octopuses made.

"Help!" he called.

She didn't move, and Dorian could only think, as he accelerated down into the blackness, that he couldn't blame her. He wouldn't have helped him, either.

* * *

Lyle rolled over in his bed, locks of brown hair sticking him in the eye. He reached inelegantly for his cell phone, perched on the pole of his top bunk, which buzzed from vibrations. Even through blurred vision, he could make out the name of the contact he had just added hours ago. Facetiously, he had put her name in his phone as "Dancer Minnie" because she had told him that her passion was ballet and he joked about confusing her with all the other Minnies on the island (though, of course, there were none—not that he knew of).

_That was fast_, he thought. When he told her to call him, he had meant maybe a few days down the line the next time she was horny or drunk enough to want it. He didn't expect three in the morning, just under two hours after he directed her out of his place in a way that wouldn't wake his father. Still, he didn't want to be rude. She had done him a service, after all. Flipping the phone open, Lyle groaned, "Hullo?"

"Lyle… Lyle, I'm sorry, are you awake?"

There was something wrong with Minnie's voice. It was quick and trembled slightly. Lyle sat up quickly in bed, his head slamming in a shock against the ceiling. "Agh!" he called out.

"Lyle, are you okay?" Minnie was frantic.

"Yeah, yeah, just, uh… hit my head. What's up? Are you alright?"

"Am I _alright_? Have you looked outside?"

"Is it storming?" Lyle rubbed the top of his head slowly and gently. A bump was going to form there, he just knew it. Immediately he began devising a plan to help the swelling go down; the last thing he needed was to look like an idiot for the party the next day, which he promised he would attend.

"Uh, yeah, and Ma'ema'e's being invaded!"

"Invaded? Um…"

"They're like aliens, Lyle—and they're everywhere. I haven't been able to leave your neighborhood because there are just so many… I can't keep running much longer. I need help. Please," she begged.

"Aliens…" Lyle paused for a second, then opened his mouth to tell her how crazy she was, but paused. He remembered his weird dream last night, a dream of the earth beneath him opening up, a dream of falling, falling gently into a hole into another world. It was a dream that had been on his mind the whole day, and part of the reason he was so dedicated to sleeping with Minnie as something to take his mind off of it. Minnie was certainly not the crazy type—she was quiet and giggly, sure, but not quirky. Why would she lie about this? Why would she be seeing things?

"Please answer me, Lyle. I'm scared. You're the only person I could call."

Maybe this meant something. Maybe this was what Lyle as called to do, in that dream of his. Maybe the holes in the world really were waiting to be filled and this was his chance to do it. Maybe he just hit his head hard enough to believe her. "Where are you? I'll be there as soon as I can."

She gave him the number of the house she was in front of, where, as of yet, none of the aliens had appeared. As soon as he hung up, Lyle slipped and fell down the ladder on the bunk bed, like most mornings, and threw on his pants (his dress shirt from the night before remained on his shirt when he went to sleep and now rested, creased and wrinkled across his chest). Paying no heed to the amount of noise he was making, he sprinted out of the house. Another fear had crossed his mind: his brother was not in the room, which meant he was out there somewhere.

Minnie was right: she really hadn't gotten far. He ran for only two minutes underneath roaring thunder and a mist of stinging rain before reaching the girl, who stood, frantic-looking and alone in the middle of the road.

Lyle ran up to her. He didn't have to go far, as she met him half-way and threw her arms around him. Startled, it took him a moment to hold her back. When she let go, he could see her mascara was running down her cheeks. Without makeup and soaked by the rain, she looked so much more vulnerable than she had a few hours ago. She was no longer the quiet, confident girl he had taken to bed, but a babbling mess, clinging to his shirt.

"Minnie, Minnie," he said, pushing her off forcefully enough to make her release him but gently enough so as to not offend her. "Calm down. Are you okay? I don't see anything."

"I _swear_ they're around," she mumbled. "I've been avoiding them since I left, but outside… outside your neighborhood, they're _everywhere_. There's nowhere to hide out there. And… and I think the rain is black or something, because there are these black puddles and I dropped my ring into one, and it fell all the way through… like, it disappeared."

"Shh," he told her, but she was already wrapping her arms around his neck again. "I'll walk you home, okay?" he said into her ear in a half-voiced whisper. "You'll be alright, and when you wake up in the morning, you'll—"

Lyle felt Minnie's center push into his chest, and a faint scraping sensation on his skin. Suddenly, the girl went limp in his arms, and fell on the concrete to his feet. A small, glowing pink thing was floating up from behind her. It was shaped like a heart and ascending until it hit his line of sight. Right in front of Lyle stood a group of at least ten black creatures, all exactly looking how Minnie had described them: like aliens. Their antennae flowed behind them like hair, and bright, yellow eyes interrupted their otherwise total blackness (aside from the glowing, blue veins up and down their bodies). They were totally naked with inhumanly long claw-like fingers, pointed toes and muscled extremities.

Minnie's body was disintegrating in a pile of black and purple, as if slowly eroding away with acid. The last bit of the girl Lyle saw, his own mouth agape in shock, was wetness in her eyes, opened wide in terror. As Lyle looked back up, he saw the small, pink heart bursting with similar colors before blossoming into a black alien creature, identical in every way to the one that killed Minnie.

"Oh… my God," was all he could say.

Lyle looked around anxiously, and this crowd seemed to be the only one in the area. However, it wasn't grabbing out at him like it had at Minnie. All eleven of the creatures—including the one recently birthed, he assumed, from Minnie's own soul—stared blankly at him, or more appropriately, through him. They made no move toward him, and after a twenty-second staring contest, turned around and scattered about the neighborhood.

"You, boy," came a voice.

Again, Lyle looked about him. He spun twice in place, dazed, but found no one.

"Come through. Save yourself."

Instantly, another burst of black and purple miasma or plasma (Lyle couldn't tell which) appeared before him. This time, it was a good fifteen feet away, and morphed itself into a door-like oval. It was the closest thing he had seen in real life to a portal.

_Real life_. This couldn't be real, he decided. Perhaps the bizarre dreams would stop if only he would lay off mind-altering substances. Still, every organ and vein and muscle and bone in his body ached for this to be real. Every part of him was ready for this escape, and if it was to be achieved in a dream, at least it was achieved at all. He ran through the portal.

* * *

**(A/N: Well, geez. This took me long enough to finish. I feel my writing naturally starts lacking once I get really into a fanfiction, and I'm slowly getting really into this fanfiction. That's bad, considering I'm doing this to improve my writing. I'll make the style more sophisticated next time, I promise—I just don't have the energy to go back and edit EVERYTHING in this chapter. Perhaps another time. I hope you liked it for the story, anyway! Please review!)**


	4. Chapter 4

**(A/N: Not much to say except a great chunk, if not all of this chapter, will likely be dedicated to Dorian's Awakening. Now, I used to be really good at these things, but once my writing started improving, the abstract/fantastical stuff probably got a little worse in the long run. We'll see; hopefully it's not awkward and clunky. Anyway, enjoy! And definitely listen to the song while reading this one, and all chapters, really; I always choose them carefully. :D)**

* * *

Chapter IV

_Some people offered up answers.  
__We made out like we heard; they were only words.  
__They didn't add up to a change in the way we were living  
__And the saddest thing is all of it could have been avoided,_

_But it was like to stop consuming's to stop being human,  
__And why'd I make a change if you won't?_

Gotye, "Eyes Wide Open"

Dorian had this dream before—he was sure of it.

He was falling unhurriedly, descending into some kind of body of water, or that's what it felt like with this eyes shut. Not really minding this portion, and only vaguely aware it was a product of his subconscious, he wondered at his ability to breathe underwater, how he could possibly be sinking. Still, it was gentle and calm, and the first part of his dream had been anything but.

_That part… was a dream, wasn't it?_

It certainly felt real, but he supposed, all dreams do until you wake up.

His body seemed to right itself in his fall, and Dorian felt his eyes opening. All was blue or black, even the ground he touched down on, gently. Though he glanced about himself twice, all was dark. He took a step forward, thinking perhaps if he walked far enough into this undersea terrain he would happen upon something, but instead found himself shielding his eyes immediately as he touched the ground for the second step. A piece of blackness seemed to peel away like a sticker straight from under his feet, and a beam of dangerously bright light shone straight into his vision.

The entire floor was disappearing. Even as Dorian's eyes adjusted to the light, he had to squint as he looked around to see the strips of blackness transform into hundreds of fish. Tropical, colorful creatures of all shapes and sizes wove between each other, swimming hastily upwards in a great undersea rainbow. He found his eyes fixed on the last few—an Emperor angelfish, a Lionfish, and a few others he couldn't identify—as they swam into the dim rays of sunlight that pushed through the surface of the ocean. It became apparent that he had to have fallen miles down into the sea, because the fish disappeared from his vision before breaking the final layer of ocean.

When Dorian brought his attention back down, he felt as if he was standing on a stained-glass window. The glow from the large, circular platform was mostly green in color, and the center of the platform featured what looked like a map of Ma'ema'e Island. He could vaguely make out his own neighborhood (or where it should have been), a small speck on the large country in the southern portion of the island. The theme park rested exactly where it should in Western Ma'ema'e, and the divisions of towns and blocks snaked like tapeworms in an organized chaos about the land.

There was nowhere, he realized with an exhale, on that island he hadn't seen. The last time the world had been a mystery to Dorian was when he was seven, when he had not yet seen the northwestern section of the island. The only mystery in his life was one nobody cared to solve—not even himself.

The border of the intricately designed glass platform was just as detailed, designed all around with four different modern kind of heart designs, like artistically re-imagined playing card suits. The first was black in color and most closely resembled a heart, with the stem ending at three points and the two bulges bisected by a pair of red spikes. The second was white in color and upside-down; the stem took up most of this design, making the shape of a pointed "x" or cross, the bulk of the heart reduced to an uninteresting base. Another looked possibly more dangerous than the previous, tinted an icy blue and looking like the crossing of two hatchets, the ends of which crossed into the heart, dividing it in three. A fourth and final design switched off in appearance each time it showed up, the first being pinkish and ghoulish looking, like two screaming ghosts joined in a vaguely heart-shape. Every other time this symbol appeared around the border, though clearly a variation of the pink one, it had its differences; rather, it was colored grey and made up primarily of two bat-shaped wings, bending around and cutting through the heart.

For some reason, Dorian had found himself lingering on the heart-symbols longer than the faces. In larger circles surrounding the center, just below the set of hearts, were the appearances Dorian recognized from home—Lucinda, Donnie, Jake, Minnie, Sadie, Barry, Lyle, Keani… some people he knew since he was in day care and others not so long. They were cut beautifully and recognizably, but surely they meant nothing.

_Can you walk?_

Dorian didn't know if he imagined the voice or if he was being spoken to through some kind of intercom, but no man or woman shared the platform with him, so he knew for sure that he was alone. In such a dream, he hardly felt himself qualified to question anything.

_Walk_, it prodded.

So he walked. Dorian found gravity had returned to normal, in contrast to however altered it had been previously when he sank into the ocean. IT was easy, and Dorian felt an odd sense of satisfaction from that, like he had accomplished a minor feat, but still one worth celebrating. It felt like a new beginning.

_Your steps will grow faster. You will grow stronger. The power of the light will embed itself into you._

The voice was not reassuring, but cold and factual. No matter how abstract, how androgynous and how vague, the voice felt familiar to Dorian—not sounded, but felt. He wondered if he was even really hearing these words, or just understanding them, just knowing them.

A glimmering burst of light shone at the end of the platform straight across from Dorian. When the shimmer faded moments later, it gave way to what looked like a tall set of double-doors. It matched the platform in beauty, but was colored a pale, powder blue with silverish markings matching the old-fashioned, long handles and border. The markers made up a sort of tropical design of wings, like the wings of a crow or perhaps a magpie. Those feathers were cut in places and loose in others, certainly disfigured in some way, and weighed down by thick, rusting chains.

Above the design was the single title: The Prisoner, in the most beautiful typography Dorian had ever seen.

_Unlock it_.

Again, the voice did not encourage or command, it simply stated.

Another burst of light broke through the normally dim illumination, and Dorian felt a weight in his left hand that his fingers, mechanically, curled around. The handle of the thing was cool and the shape of it barely familiar—a long, white shaft wrapped in black ribbon and a sun at the very end. Suddenly, it came to him—that shape was one he'd only seen in story books, movies, games, places with lakes and tundras and rainforests—otherworldly places. That was a solar eclipse. That was it, this weapon was Solar Eclipse, and it was beautiful. It was extreme, brilliant brightness obscured almost completely by the cold, plain, undeniable moon. It was a halo of light.

_Keyblade_, said the voice, or perhaps Dorian already knew.

He tried to repeat the word aloud, but no sound pushed its way out of his throat. This was a commonality in his dreams, the inability to speak, and so he thought little of it. Still, he thought, when Lyle told him about lucid dreams, didn't he tell him he could control what happened in the dream? Why could he only control his body but he couldn't even utter a sound?

A door was waiting to be opened, and perhaps it was his imagination, but Dorian could swear his keyblade was shivering in his hand.

_Step through and learn the truth._

Well, that was certainly convincing. As Dorian walked step forward and pushed down the handle, he saw that the door wasn't nearly as heavy as he had expected it to be. Another brilliant light (which he was shocked his eyes weren't used to beholding yet) glowed on him. It was warm and inviting amongst the cool deepness of this odd ocean, and so he stepped through.

A breeze like a fleece blanket rubbed against his bare arms and the smell of jasmine wafted through the air. Dorian blinked the colored spots out of his vision and, moments later, found himself standing on the beach—the same beach he last remembered as being infested by mysterious, black creatures.

This couldn't possibly be the same beach from earlier. For one thing, it wasn't overrun with black bugs, nor was the sky thick with poisonous-looking storm clouds. Not a single obstruction blocked the view to the sun and the waves of the sea pulled gently on the empty shoreline. Empty it was, except for Dorian himself and a small girl a few yards away, standing where the sea met the land and letting her pink Mary Janes get soaked in saltwater.

Dorian craned his head to see that the door from which he had come had disappeared. Seeing nothing else of interest on South Beach, he headed toward the girl. Surely she would have seen him in her peripheral vision, but she didn't even flinch when he was barely a step away from her.

"Uh… hi," said Dorian, raising a hand to his throat. It seemed his voice picked a perfectly opportune time to start working again.

"Isn't the sea pretty?"

Her voice as soft and squeaky, exactly how he had imagined it. She couldn't have been more than eight or nine years old, but there was something too serene about her, like an old woman accepting the end of a long life. Her big, dark blue eyes were heavily lidded with violet-brown eyelashes that matched her very long, straight hair. She tangled her fingers together behind her back, clad in a simple white dress with a tiny, pink heart on the chest.

Did Dorian have any little cousins he forgot about, or a half-sister he saw in a Christmas card years ago? This little girl was not too foreign—something of her, be it her skin tone or eyes or lip shape—was something he was sure he'd seen before.

"Sure." He lingered on the word a moment. "Who are you? Have I seen you before?"

"You're funny." The girl turned to look at him. She was grinning, but the smile looked constrained, somehow, not quite meeting her eyes. "Nobody's met me in a real long time."

Dorian raised an eyebrow. "O…kay. Listen, do you know what's going on?"

"The world was dying," she said, and then puffed up her chest an inch or two, "but I fixed it."

As she turned back to face the ocean, Dorian only found himself more puzzled than he was a moment ago, when he stepped onto the beach. He was half-ready to walk away, but didn't exactly have anyone else to point him in the right direction. If this failed, he decided he would head back towards his home, even if it was a twenty-minute walk. "But can you tell me what's going on?" he asked her.

"What's more important," she began, "learning the truth or living a life of comfortable lies?"

This girl was fucked up. "Hey," he said, and reached out to put a hand on her shoulder to spin her around. His fingers slipped right through her skin and landed at his side. Did he miss? He tried again, but again could not touch her.

"Are you a ghost?" he asked. "A dream? Am I still dreaming? Who are you?"

As the girl turned and opened her mouth to speak, a familiar, dazzling light poured from her mouth. Just before it blinded Dorian completely, he could have sworn he saw a face on hers that was not her own, but similar in so many ways—a face with high cheekbones, long eyelashes and smiling lips that he couldn't place.

When the light subsided, so did the sand under his feet, the warm wind and the smell of jasmine it brought along with it. Instead, Dorian found himself back in the deep blueness from which he had disappeared, the only light being the dim glow from the sun high above his head, above the water, and the shimmering of the platform on which he stood. It was different now, though. Powder blue in color, it seemed to light the area more than the previous, green one. The border of this platform was made up of cartoon depictions of what looked like the elements: there was a ball of fire, an ice crystal, a lightning bolt, and a swirling depiction of wind, and a bell flower.

More interestingly was the center depiction. It showed a girl with strawberry blond hair, messy in that it seemed to be partially straightened but partially left in a wavy state. She was pale and wore a green, swirling off-shoulder top and short denim shorts—in all ways, she was exactly a normal teenager, except Dorian recognized her; he recognized her one blue eye and one brown eye, and he recognized her vacant expression. She was reclining on a cloud.

He tried to say her name, but again, her throat closed up. Apparently the privilege of speech had an expiration date in this dream.

_Can you fight?_

The voice didn't allow Dorian to answer, but this time, when Solar Eclipse popped into his left hand, bright light and all, it felt more like he had called it and less that it had come to him. He didn't have enough time to decide whether or not this was progress; a black pool had begun to expand on the platform, beginning on the girl's eyes, and from it erupted at least ten black creatures.

These were different, somehow, than the ones Dorian remembered. They were shorter, for one, and lacked those odd, glowing blue veins. It was as if someone had taken the original black bugs and cartooned them into these stubby, spastic characters that would have been, if they weren't lunging for Dorian's heart, almost cute.

He tried to remember the semester of fencing his brother forced him to take, which was easier now that he wasn't wasted (and this was all, of course, happening within his mind). Though his limited knowledge of the Épée had barely gotten him a passing grade in high school, it was more than enough against these little runts, who were much easier to dispose of than their larger counterparts. Even so, Dorian almost felt as if, holding the keyblade, he was stronger than he should have been, faster and more accurate.

_The keyblade gives you power_.

By the time he had received that convenient, kind little answer, all of the creatures were gone with not even a scratch on him. Still, his heart beat was quick and his breaths short; for a dream, everything felt distressingly real.

_The Heartless are ruthless_, said the voice, _and will continue to attack you so long as you possess the keyblade, and so long as you have enough light in your heart._

The abstractions were giving Dorian a headache. He no longer pretended to comprehend everything he was being told, but he had gotten the name of the creatures—the Heartless—and waited impatiently for the moment he would wake up and tell Lyle all about the weird dream he had the night before.

_Lyle_. The thought was followed immediately by another flash of light, and Dorian braced himself. Thankfully, its source wasn't from nearby, but rather across the platform. Another door reared itself, and as Dorian stepped up to it, he saw it was identical in skeleton to the door previous, save for a few key differences: for one, the doors were a deep crimson in color, and the jamb and markings on this one were made of jade (or some other dull, green material).

The markings on this door looked entirely like snakesin, its scaly sheen interrupted by only jagged fissures which resembled, in some ways, bolts of lightning. Dorian wanted so badly to analyze and understand these symbols, but he was no symbolist and any conclusion he might have come to was shot in the face by the phrase written about the top of the door: The Reckless.

Still, he lifted his keyblade and, pointing it at the door handle, knew the answers would come to him eventually; they had to. The same simple light beam erupted from the tip of Solar Eclipse and into the door. When the click sounded, just as before, the stream broke and the keyblade dematerialized. Dorian wasted no time and pushed hard on the doors after twisting the handles, and again found himself blinded.

His eyes were still dazzled a few seconds through the door, but when he regained his vision, found himself somewhere dark and unfamiliar.

Again, his feet were crunching sand, but this sand as well as the water which lapped up onto it was darkened heavily by the night. His heart almost stopped upon glancing across the ocean—mountains, oddly-shaped mountains silhouetted the horizon. Such a thing, he thought, could only be seen in dreams. Never in his life, outside of artistic depictions and fictitious material, had he seen a hint of land beyond the ocean. He was fixated. He was enthralled. He hardly noticed the dancing figure in the distance.

She was young, either his age or a bit older, and clothed in all shades of blue in a ballet uniform. The way she spun and waved her arms in dance was like nothing he'd ever seen before, her shoulder-length, blond hair (which, incidentally, also faded into a deep blue) fanning like a halo about her head. Two small, angelical wings sprouted from her back, both of which seemed to dance independently from the girl, to their own rhythm, as if they weren't attached to her back at all. Blue miasma, sparkling and ethereal, flowed behind her like iridescent ribbons, like trails of glittering black light.

Dorian hated to interrupt her dance, but, minutes later, it didn't seem close to stopping. "Hey," he called.

The girls movements ended in an abrupt stop. Even from far away, he could see her right her body spastically, stare at Dorian like he had just stepped on her puppy, and back away a pace despite already being at a safe distance. She must not have known he was watching.

"I'm sorry," said Dorian quickly. "But where am I?"

Moments later, and still the girl was silent, scared.

"Do you know where I am? Where we are?"

She said nothing. She didn't even move.

"Hey," he said, louder now. "Can you hear me?"

The moment Dorian took a step forward, the blue-clad girl did a perfect spin about face and ran off, quicker than he had ever seen anyone his age run before, like a dragonfly flitting away at the swat of a hand.

"Hey!" called Dorian again, growing increasingly uneasy. She soon disappeared beneath the thick cover of fog, and Dorian let out a single defeated breath. As he turned, hoping to find the door from which he came, he instead nearly fell backward, his heart frozen in his chest. Standing immediately before him was a tall figure, cloaked in all black save for silver tassels and a zipper, the hood of which completely obscured the face.

"You're far too bright for this place," the figure said once Dorian caught himself. He was hoping this man was the source of the voice which had been speaking to him on the stained-glass platform, but there was no way. The voices were too different. The platform voice was abstract, implacable, but familiar. This one was concrete, and clearly that of an older male, yet completely foreign.

"Your brother, however…"

"Lyle?" asked Dorian. "You know where Lyle is?" He thought back to his destroyed town.

"Yes."

His heart sped now. "Is he safe?"

The man shook his head. "No."

"_What_?" It felt nice to riase his voice after spending over half his time in silence.

"No one is safe—not anymore. No one ever is. Neither are you."

After the Heartless invasion, though Dorian didn't want to admit it, he couldn't deny that. The fact that Lyle was anywhere at all, that he hadn't been slaughtered by these dark creatures, was enough to put his mind at least somewhat at ease about his brother. He would have asked the man where exactly he was, but didn't expect him to answer any more than he expected his brother to burst in through the door in a charro suit and a thick, black mustache with a guitar in his arms.

When what felt like an eternity had passed, Dorian asked, "Who was that girl?"

"Nobody," answered the man.

"She's beautiful," he commented. "And her dancing is…" He would have said "breathtaking," but even that didn't do it justice.

"She was someone's fault."

"Well, so was I, and I'm not so bad," Dorian said. "My mom forgot to take her pill and—"

"Leave," the figure interrupted. "What are you doing here?"

His eyes first widened, then leered. "I—" he began, but before he could approach the next word, a flash of light filled everything about him once more. Though Dorian couldn't rationalize it, he found himself oddly disappointed to be leaving the place. Dark as it was, it was so peaceful—so peaceful, and so cool.

He wasn't surprised to find himself yet again on a platform, different, of course, from the first two on which he stood. The bright red of this one stood out drastically against the cool green and blue of the previous. Again, the border had altered. Rather, simple numerals surrounded the center: a simple I through XIII, and a single question mark, all in green type—a dull green, like the border of the door which took him to the cool, dark beach.

There was no surprise in finding the image of Lyle occupying the center. He was wearing what Dorian last remembered him wearing—a blue dress shirt, black skinny jeans and a matching black tie, but there was something different about his face, which turned its profile despite facing the opposite direction. His eyes, usually a sweet, icy blue, were narrowed and darkened. His face was expressionless, but nothing good could come of it.

_You will face other enemies._

Dorian knew what was coming before they could materialize. He called Solar Eclipse, simply by wanting it in his hands. It was there, like a loyal puppy. Meanwhile, as if he were standing in a computer, in thin air had appeared various numbers, scaling up, and pixels, which all formed themselves into large, white bodies.

These were the size of Dorian himself, all pale in color and bobbing, gently, up and down. Though under five in number, he could tell these wouldn't be an easy task, like the Heartless were. Their stomachs were barely the width of Dorian's arm, which led to odd, spindly legs that ended in sharp-looking points for feet. Matching points made up the heels as well as the hands, the fingers of which were taped together with bands of black. A symbol rested atop their heads, or their hoods (Dorian couldn't tell which, not since their head seemed to unzip and reveal a black smile beneath). It was a symbol he recognized from the first platform he was on—a heart which resembled mostly a pointed "x."

They were not Heartless; they weren't like the larger ones on the island, nor the smaller ones on the second platform. They moved slowly, carefully. The first of the three even spun himself upside-down and began walking, on the air, his head facing Dorian. It swatted at the boy, and he sailed ten feet down the platform. His feet slipped off the edge, and all his insides failed to function for a moment. It was only by sheer luck that Dorian had enough time to grip the side of the platform with his right hand, his keyblade dangling uselessly in his left.

It wasn't a platform, he noticed, but a pillar—a pillar which descended so far down that it was lost in black before he could see the base.

_Dorian._

Slowly, the three, white creatures were approaching the edge.

_The keyblade makes you strong. Draw your power from it._

It wasn't as if Dorian had any other choice. He tried channeling all of his attention onto his hand, and the keyblade in his hand. He felt a prickly kind of warmth, like a limb falling asleep, rush through his arms and then, suddenly, all throughout his body. Pulling himself up, he found his strength increased by at least three times, and flung himself back onto the center of the pillar.

They were quicker, now, and Dorian wasn't about to take them for granted. He lunged at the first with Solar Eclipse, stabbing it square in the stomach and knocking it backwards. The other two began walking on their awkward, invisible ceiling, and, like a helicopter, he spun his keyblade around six or seven times, hitting them each twice in the process. The two disappeared in thin air, but that still left the third, which was quickly advancing on him.

Again, the creature jabbed an arm at him, and though Dorian could feel the warm prickle fading from his skin, enough was imbued in him to slow himself before getting anywhere near the edge. While he retaliated with another swipe of his keyblade, the creature dodged it. He couldn't help but wonder what this creature was, because it certainly wasn't a Heartless.

_Nobody_, answered the voice.

_Well, that's super helpful_, thought Dorian, finally managing to destroy the creature on his next contact, in which he slammed his keyblade against its head.

The third door's appearance at the opposite end of the pillar was expected. This was possibly his favorite of the three, he noticed as he walked forward, keyblade still in hand. Its base was colored a solid tea, and the markings of this door were a contrasting, stark topaz color. The markings on this door made him nervous; they were tentacles, eight of them spanning the face. The door itself, however, was scratched and splintered right down the center.

The top of the door read: The Blind.

_You have one final test._

And he planned on passing it. Dorian lifted his keyblade and let it do its work, unlocking the doors with a pointed beam of light. Immediately once it clicked open, he allowed the keyblade to disappear from his grip and threw the doors open, confidently, washing himself away in the whiteness.

It subsided quickly, his eyes finally growing used to the light. Where he found himself was not at the edge of a beach, but rather in the water—not like he was when he fell down onto the pillars, but in real water. The resistance was the same and the colors were the same as the ocean floor of the Moana Sea. The reefs and the fish swimming about were illustrious and colorful, and the only oddity that remained was that Dorian could breathe.

He was also wearing only his boxers, but tried to ignore that fact. It only served as a welcome reminder that all of this was, most definitely, a dream.

Dorian waited a moment, perhaps for another shadowy figure or little girl, but instead was met with a rumbling sea and the scattering of all the fish. He looked around, auburn hair occasionally blocking his vision, and found nothing but the deep blue sea. When he looked up, however, there it was.

Descending was the same creature he had fought, crawling from the abyss in the cul-de-sac back on land. He turned and swam back at least fifty feet; not only was he not prepared to see those horrific gashes down its skin or the gaping holes where its eyes should have been, but he knew that as slow as it was on land, perhaps he could have taken it. This time, it was underwater—it had to be fast.

That growling, the growling Dorian _knew_ an octopus didn't make, sounded again, and this time much louder, and much deeper. By the time he turned, Dorian realized he hadn't swam far enough away. The creature was right there, right in his face… and close up, it was possibly gorier and more horrifying than it had been dried and shriveled in the oxygen of the outside world.

And he was right—that thing was fast. It swept like a bullet at him with a single, unbroken tentacle and knocked Dorian farther into the ocean than he had been knocked on the pillar, but this time had nothing to grab onto. One of the spikes had jammed into his arm; it didn't look like a deep wound, but it certainly wasn't shallow, either. Deep red blood flowed through the ocean like food coloring, like it was deliberate.

The creature cried out again.

_You have intelligence, Dorian. An intelligence wasted on the blind._

Since when was that voice allowed to follow him outside of the pillar-area? Just as he began to ponder this and the octopus let out another agitated cry, Dorian understood: the keyblade gave him power. If it gave him the ability to superpower his muscles, even if only temporarily, perhaps it also gave him the power to heal. Tenderly, he raised the keyblade and pointed it at his wound, focusing so hard that he felt like lunatic. The word "heal" rang through his mind, and, after a moment, he felt the warm tingling run through his fingertips once more. A tiny, green flower appeared just above the wound, which Dorian believed may have been a product of hallucinations due to blood loss. It sprinkled glitter on his wound and, before his eyes, the skin stitched itself back together.

Definitely the blood loss, he decided… except that he was in a dream.

He felt energized. Dorian charged at the creature, swimming quickly as he had learned from a young age. The octopus flung its arm at him again, but, with newfound speed, he dodged the tentacle and went straight for what his instincts told him the creature's weak spot was: his eyes (or lack thereof). The keyblade jammed itself into the gaping hole, and the creature cried out, flinging itself backward. Its flesh was beginning to rot, with a dark aura, and disappear. By the time it had caught itself and lunged after Dorian again, half of its tentacles were worn down to stubs and the rest of its skin was deteriorating, the giant holes in its exterior resembling cottage cheese. One of its eyes was gone.

Dorian knew immediately what he had to do: go after the other eye. It continued to fling itself at Dorian, but was noticeably slower without its tentacles, and its swipes looked considerably weaker. Still, it was guarding its second eye like a precious palace, and as much as Dorian hit the tentacles that blocked it, it didn't seem to waver. He was knocked around a couple of times before it came to him again: magic.

Whatever it was that allowed the keyblade to heal his wound, surely it could do a world of other things. With Solar Eclipse pointed at the octopus, it was hard to concentrate on something, anything that would damage those tentacles for just long enough to get to the eye as his remaining tentacles knocked him around.

The bell flower had looked _so _familiar, so perhaps, he thought, the skills that the keyblade gave him were the same as those that surrounded the pillar on which Keani was featured. He tried desperately to remember the symbols as he avoided the tentacles: there was fire, he remembered, but that wouldn't work underwater…

_Lightning_.

Again, Dorian tried to concentrate all his attention and energy into the keyblade, which was easier now that he had a direct goal in mind. _Lightning_, he thought again. _Thunder. Lightning. Electricity. Thunder._

And it erupted. The shock seemed to fall from the sky, or more appropriately, the surface of the ocean, and streamed right down onto the octopus's guarding tentacles. It wailed in pain, moving its extremities out of the way, and Dorian took the opportunity, lunging himself right into the last remaining hole in the eye.

Before he was even given the satisfaction of watching the creature disintegrate into darkness, the familiar, brilliant light filled Dorian's vision, and after that, he remembered nothing.

* * *

**(A/N: Wow, finally. That dragged on longer than I thought. Sorry I couldn't come up with many synonyms or at least some other ways to describe the enemies and the bright light. Again, I suck at abstractions. I hope it was at least entertaining on a surface level! I'm going to go do something productive with my life. Probably. Hopefully.)**


End file.
